But What If These Are Poetic Times?
Dateline: 11/16/99
It has never done poets -- and their respective communities -- any harm to be kicked upside the head every now and again. Shakes out the complacency, complacency being the poet’s mortal nemesis, after all. Take, for example, the September article in the LA Weekly, “Perhaps These Are Not Poetic Times at All,” the title, of course, being appropriated from a poem by Nikki Giovanni. In this somewhat stilted and befuddled piece of journalism, reporter Brendan Bernhard attempts to find out if Los Angeles reads its poets, and comes up with a collective, “Nope. Never heard of ‘em. Wouldn’t wanna live near ‘em.”
shakes
out the
complacency. . . |
Writes Bernhard: “‘Poetry is the soul of a culture, man,’ I was told by a Los Angeles poet named Eric Priestley. If that is true -- and it may not be, obviously -- then this is a culture that |
steers well clear of its soul. Poetry matters remarkably little to us, either on a daily level or on a symbolic, even sentimental, level. No one talks about it, and no one quotes it. No one even seems to feel nostalgic about it.”
This statement seems to have
angered a goodly number of Los Angeles poets and aficionados, to which I have to say “Bully for you! Now whattya gonna do about it?” You see, most of the criticism that’s been |
complacency
being
the
poet's. . .
|
piled on the
Weekly since Berhard's essay appeared has boiled down to, “They didn’t mention me,” or at the very least, “They didn’t mention the reading I attend.” A good chunk of the criticism has been puerile and self-serving. Not all, by any means, but this writer has endured now dozens of phone calls and emails regarding the piece, and quite frankly, that has been the number-one complaint. Which is a shame, because there are so many better things to take the article to task for.
mortal
nemesis,
after
all. . . |
The fundamental flaw in the article is that it looks to a literary “elite” for guidance -- and frankly, there isn’t much of one to speak of. The poets interviewed, for the most part, are the same ones that would have been interviewed for this article five, |
quite possibly ten, years ago. Surely,
David St. John is one of California’s better poets, and I’ve long admired Eric Priestley (and count him as a friend) -- but Bernhard's article could have benefited from some of the vital new blood in LA poetry -- members of the
Valley Contemporary Poets, perhaps, who have breathed new life into poetry in the City of Angels. Worse still, no mention is made of
Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, which has been the heart and soul of Los Angeles literature for over twenty years. Not at least referring to Beyond Baroque is a bit like writing an overview of Los Angeles politics and not mentioning Mayor Riordan.
| But perhaps the writer’s first mistake was in not asking, “Who’s listening to poetry in Los Angeles?” Several readings attract the elusive “non-poet audience” -- some of that audience simply looking to go freak-viewing, others devoted fans. (Although after attending |
I
have
to
say. . .
|
several readings, these people will occasionally try their hands at a poem themselves, and is there anything wrong with that?) Moreover, Bernhard seemingly wants LA poetry to be the property of a highly comfortable, effete literati -- an intellectual elite to whom, quite frankly, poets had best not cater.
Bully
for
you!
Now. . . |
In a sidebar to the article, the LA Weekly asks a collection of comfortable professionals -- screenwriters, historians, director Oliver Stone, conservative pundit Arianna Huffington -- whether they read poetry. The writer then seems surprised |
when the answer is either “no,” or the preference tends towards dead poets or “popular” contemporaries such as
Gwendolyn Brooks. There should be no surprise in this. While poetry, at its best, is universal and timeless, pain and anger are much more comfortably dealt with in retrospect. This is why so many poets are only celebrated after their death. What is a wealthy political columnist like Huffington -- one dedicated to maintaining the status quo of the rich -- going to take away from a ragged street poet like
Ben Porter Lewis, or even a less political, more humanistic poet like
Robert Wynne. The force of emotion communicated by the poet is timeless, but so much more immediate when connected with a face. That the emotion captured by the poem is still alive is an uncomfortable thought. And so it should be.
| Bernhard’s error is one not of malevolence, but of ignorance. Too many reporters attempt to capture all of poetry in 4,000 words -- as ridiculous as attempting to capture “music” or “politics” in such a space. But perhaps a certain degree of laziness figures into the |
whattya
gonna
do
about
it?
|
equation, also. Certainly, he seems aware that there are readings in Los Angeles, but it appears no effort was made to attend any of them. When Bernhard interviewed Priestley, they evidently discussed freestyle rappers, but that avenue of poetry is not explored in the article. Even the erudite intelligentsia he interviewed admit, in some cases, to attending readings, yet he never follows that lead. Consistently, Bernhard fails to pursue avenues that would, if not disprove his thesis, certainly alter his results.
But to be fair, this article is an outsider’s perspective, and perhaps poets should take note of how confusing and befuddled our world looks to those not in it, how the morass of faces and voices and names compile to be almost meaningless to the uninitiated. As said before, the majority of criticism I’ve heard has come from the pain of not being recognized -- and I’ll be the first to admit how frustrating that can be. My challenge then, to the poets of Los Angeles, is for each of them to weigh in their hearts what that sort of recognition really means to them, and whether it really matters if Arianna Huffington reads their work.
For fear of sounding overly religious, Jesus didn’t preach to the intelligentsia of Jerusalem. He preached to the lepers and the streetwalkers, the moneylenders and the thieves. His audience would never be interviewed by the LA Weekly, and perhaps we can do no better. I’m not saying don’t pursue fame and prestige; just consider the terms you want them on. Only you can answer that, poets.
--Victor Infante
is our
Orange County Museletter correspondent & writes often for the Orange County Weekly.
He also hosts Virtual Radio's music interview series, available online in RealAudio.
You can see photos from his 1997 “Gas, Grubb & Grammar” tour with Hank Hyena, Juliette Torrez & Lisa Verlo at Aaron Yamaguchi's Six Gallery site.
Read about his invention of scifaiku in the Seattle Times' online reprint of an article from the Orange County Register. (And if you like the genre & want to know more, follow on to SciFaiku.com.)
Victor's poem “January” was featured in the 1999 Poetry Calendar.
His poem for his great-grandmother, Valentine's
Day, was published online when Victor was one of the first featured poets at Poetry Super Highway.
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